La Jolla Music Society SummerFest 2012

You can only admire SummerFest for taking a risk and presenting an unconventional pairing of singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane and his father, pianist Jeffrey Kahane, as the centerpiece of the first of three Tuesday concerts at Sherwood Auditorium exploring the music of Schubert.

In an intriguing program that also included Schubert’s String Quartet in G Major played by the Tokyo String Quartet, the Kahanes alternated between past and present, the younger playing his songs, and the older playing works by Schubert and Schumann (with Gabriel Kahane singing one Schubert song).

It was an unusual format that aspired to have “the old reveal itself to be new, and vice versa,” but not surprisingly, the issues it raised proved to be more complicated than the realization that a good tune is a powerful thing and lot of music that crosses genres is based on the idea of melody and accompaniment. Here are a few questions:

Was Kahane’s music classical? Certainly not in the traditional sense. Despite the sophistication of his accompaniments and the unexpected nature of his chord progressions, they still resemble pop songs (a more overtly classical work of Kahane’s, “Come On All You Ghosts,” will be presented on Saturday’s “Commissions and Premieres” program). Then again, in an era where composers of Kahane’s generation are forming bands and many are writing tunes that are more predictable than Kahane’s melodies, maybe that word classical has lost its meaning.

Wasn’t that the point of the concert, to show that music is just music? Maybe, but the term classical music does have some meaning when applied to Schubert. There are matters of style, context and performance practice, although there are also issues concerning the mannerisms and expectations that build up on a piece over the decades, sometimes obscuring its true nature.

So did Jeffrey Kahane go beyond mannerism, revealing the old to be new? That was the most perplexing part of this concert: While Gabriel Kahane’s performances of his own music sounded heartfelt and without pretension, Jeffrey Kahane’s playing sounded routine. If anything, he de-emphasized the lyrical aspects that formed the strongest parallels to his son’s music. After awhile, these great masterpieces seemed like mere interludes between Gabriel Kahane’s songs.

What about the audience’s response? Many of the SummerFest regulars apparently responded before the concert by not showing up, judging from the empty seats (the previous three SummerFest concerts have been near capacity). It seemed as if the concert was unable to attract the younger audience that might have better related to Gabriel Kahane’s appealing music and left those who did show up indifferent, based on the mild applause afforded the Kahanes and the cheers and immediate standing ovation that greeted the Tokyo String Quartet’s reading of the G Major Schubert Quartet.

The Tokyo String Quartet (which performs an entire program Sunday) uncharacteristically played with more muscle than finesse, but there were no questions about what kind of music this was.